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Bharti Airtel reported a profit of $6 million from African operations for the fourth quarter from a loss of $57 million a year ago, on the back of growth in the data customer base and consumption, while overall revenue growth was helped by currency stabilization in most markets.

The Sunil Mittal-led mobile carrier’s Africa revenue climbed 2.6% to $888 million in the three months ended March from $872 million a year earlier. The financial year 2016-17 becomes the first full year that was positive on profit before tax level.

Raghunath Mandava, chief operating officer of Airtel Africa, said that revenue growth for the quarter was 4.4% in constant currency terms during FY 16-17 with net revenues up a healthy 5.0% as it shed unprofitable lines. Data consumption and revenues have grown by 95.5% & 23.5% respectively in the just ended fiscal.

“Our efforts to deliver a profitable business model for Africa have resulted in EBITDA growth of 36.0% with margin expanding by +500 basis points on an underlying basis in FY 16-17. For the first time ever, African operation has delivered positive PBT (profit before tax) in the financial year (constant currency),” Mandava said in a statement issued by Bharti Airtel.

In the last quarter ended March this year, Bharti Airtel and Millicom International signed an agreement to combine their operations in Ghana through their respective subsidiaries, Airtel Ghana Limited and Tigo Ghana Limited, where the final entity will have equal ownership and governance rights from both parties. The deal closure is subject to customary regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.

Over the last fiscal, sale of Airtel operations in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone to Orange were closed, and sale and lease back of 1,510 towers in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Niger was also completed. With this, the company has sold and leased back 10,450 towers in 10 countries.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose to $238 million from $171 million, a year earlier. The Ebitda margin was at 26.8%, up from 19.6% in the corresponding quarter last year.

Mobile data revenue increased 14.5% to $157 million from a year earlier. Mobile data now represents 17.7% of total revenue compared with 15.7% in the same period a year ago.

Overall Africa average revenue per user (ARPU), a key performance metric, fell by 4.4% to $3.7 on-year, while sequentially it fell by 5.1%. Total minutes on the network, were up 0.6% to 33.9 billion, from 33.7 billion in the same period the previous year.

Data realisation per MB fell 35.3% to $0.39 from $0.607 in the year-ago period despite Airtel Africa’s data customer base growing 19.3% to 18 million from 15.13 million earlier.

Africa data traffic volumes rose by 77% to 40.33 billion MBs from 22.7 billion MBs, while data ARPU was down 4.4% to $2.9 in the same period. Sequentially, data ARPU was flat.

The company’s total Airtel Money customer base using the mobile money platform increased by 4.3% to 9 million in the quarter ended March 2017. Airtel Money’s transaction value was up by 35% to $4 billion in Q4 2017, from $3 billion the year before.